USDA surprised the trade with an increase in U.S. corn acreage in the Planted Acreage and Quarterly Stocks Report. The agency pegged corn acres at 94.2 million, up 1.5 million from March and well above expectations. Brian Basting with Advance Trading says the trade was actually looking for lower corn acreage than the March intentions.
And Basting says quarterly stocks for corn also came in above estimates and were up from 2015.
Soybean acreage was slated at 83.7 million acres which was up from March, but just slightly lower than the estimate.
Basting says the quarterly soybean stocks were a little bearish at 870 million bushels. That’s above the trade estimate and last year’s 627 million bushels. However, demand is starting to erode that number.
He says using the new acreage figures new crop ending stocks will push over 2 billion bushels for corn, but fall below 200 million bushels for soybeans.
All wheat acreage was projected at 50.82 million acres, which is up from March and the average trade estimate. Quarterly stocks were projected at 981 million bushels, up from 752 million in 2015.